Writer-director Noah Baumbach’s first film since his 2005 breakout hit The Squid and the Whale, Margot at the Wedding is another tale of a dysfunctional family, albeit one with no connection to his own biography. At its center are two sisters, Margot (Nicole Kidman) and Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh, a.k.a. Mrs. Baumbach).

As we meet her, Margot is a mess. A moderately successful writer of short stories, she has just decided to leave what she regards as an unfulfilling marriage. She’s traveling by train with her pubescent son Claude to attend Pauline’s wedding to a man (Jack Black) Margot considers beneath her. Pauline still lives in the family house, a ramshackle place in what looks like one of the less-desirable parts of the Hamptons (though the neighbors seem straight out of the Ozarks). Margot and Pauline haven’t spoken in some time, for no apparent reason other than sisterly tension.

Margot may be telling herself that she’s going to the wedding to get back in touch with her family, but if so she’s fooling herself. A volcano of egoism, she’s just looking for a place to explode, and this weekend will give her more than enough opportunity.

Fans of Squid and the Whale may be disappointed that Baumbach’s new film doesn’t contain the same degree of outrageous dark humor. That’s not to say that it’s a dissimilar movie: This is another story about people skilled at dissecting characters who wield that skill like a weapon, and if your criteria for enjoying a film includes characters you can relate to and root for, maybe you should see what else is at the multiplex.

On a break from shooting Baz Luhrmann’s epic Australia in—well, see if you can guess—Nicole Kidman was at a press function in Manhattan last month to promote Margot at the Wedding. She describes Margot as “having a breakdown. She’s in crisis, and the way she’s reacting and behaving is an indicator of all of the inner turmoil. I don’t think she’s very coherent or lucid about what’s going on.

“The wonderful thing about Noah is that he’s wickedly funny. He’s dealing with disturbing parts of family life and he’s able to bring humor to it. I’ve always been attracted to material like that—I made a film called To Die For which dealt with some pretty dark subject matter, but Buck Henry wrote it with such humor. And Noah has the same ability to balance that.”

Although Baumbach shoots his films in a low-key style reminiscent of the Dogma movement, Kidman says there was no improvising—with the exception of a scene that the writer-director added while filming, the script was shot as is. And while she is famously close with her own sister Antonia, she says that didn’t influence her approach to Margot.

“I don’t want to do the things I know,” she explains. “I’m interested in exploring the psychology I don’t know. I’m interested in learning about different people’s natures—human beings fascinate me. My own references are probably less interesting to me. With my own sister, we’re very joined, she’s a huge part of my life. I probably wouldn’t have got through parts of my life without her, and she would say the same thing about me.

“So the combativeness of this relationship [between Margot and Pauline] is what interested me. I think its fascinating when you have this expectation that because you’re family you should be getting along. There are a lot of people in this world who would say, ‘I don’t get along with my family, and I should and I’m trying, but just because we have the same blood running through us doesn’t mean that we have the right chemistry together.’ And that’s fascinating to me.”

At a point in her career where she can pick and choose her films, Kidman has used her status as an Oscar winner with an international audience to do movies that interest her rather than the ones that pay best. Recently married to country singer Keith Urban, she cherishes the time at home with her family that financial independence allows her. That’s why she denies the rumors that she’ll be starring in Wong Kar Wai’s remake or Orson Welles’ The Lady From Shanghai—“I’m not willing to go and live in another country for a year—it’s just not right for my life right now.”

As to who she would like to work with, she has a definite list. “I seek out directors who I’m curious about who I think are strong voices. I’m not frightened of difficult directors, I’m drawn to that. Sometimes that results in great films, sometime that results in films that reached high but didn’t get there.

“I’d really like to work with Martin Scorsese—I’d love him to construct a film around a woman. I ask him all the time, I beg him, because I’ve been interested in seeing that movie.

“I’d like to work with Spielberg. I’ve always said I’d like to work with Steven, and I’ve known him as a friend for a long time. If Wong Kar Wai would shoot something a little closer to home, I’d like to work with him as well. I’d be willing to go back into Lars von Trier [Dogville] territory at some stage.”

In the meantime, she has great hopes for Australia, the film she’s shooting with her Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann. She describes it as “the film that I wanted to make when I was a little girl. It’s deeply romantic, it’s got a magical quality to it, but it’s still a sweeping drama sprinkled with some comedy. So if we can pull that off I’ll be very very pleased. It’s nice to be able to stand by a director you’ve worked with before and say, let’s try to do something unusual and special. Who knows, next year maybe we’ll be sitting here and you’ll be saying it didn’t work! But we’re certainly working hard to do it.”

As for her other current film, The Golden Compass, she compares making it to working on Margot with one word: “Different! Much bigger. Student actors used to think that mime class was so not important, something you were never going to use. Now with green screen special effects, the mime classes and the accent classes are the most important ones! I used all of that Marcel Marceau stuff.”